A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, Cantiere #43 - War leaves destruction and pollution for future generations - Giuseppe Oldani (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Wars bring destruction and death, human and economic devastation, but 
what is not sufficiently highlighted are the environmental consequences 
of wars. Their disastrous environmental impact includes water and soil 
pollution and the destruction of ecosystems, leaving profound and 
lasting scars on nature, jeopardizing the health of our planet for 
future generations.
Record levels of conflict and violence have been recorded in recent 
years: according to some analyses, 170 conflicts were recorded in 2023, 
and by the end of that year, nearly 120 million people worldwide were 
forced to flee their homes.
The environmental damage caused by wars has devastating consequences for 
ecosystems, people's health, and livelihoods. When forests are cleared 
for military purposes or fertile land and water resources are lost and 
contaminated, vast areas are rendered uninhabitable and difficult to 
recover after many years.
Examples include Sudan, where these tactics have been denounced by local 
populations, and Iraq, where wetlands were drained during the civil war.
In Ukraine, vast areas are at risk of contamination by mines and 
unexploded ordnance. Soil, waterways, and forests have been polluted by 
bombings, fires, and floods. Clearing mines and unexploded ordnance 
often takes years and requires significant investment. In Ukraine, the 
estimated costs for such clearance currently amount to $34.6 million. 
These rapid damage and needs assessments[1]are conducted by 
organizations such as the World Bank, the United Nations, and the 
European Commission, which estimate physical damage, socioeconomic 
losses, and recovery needs following disasters and conflicts.
In Gaza, in addition to the tens of thousands of deaths, there is also 
land degradation, water pollution, and the loss of arable land. 
Sewerage, wastewater, and waste management facilities are collapsing.
The destruction of buildings, roads, and infrastructure has generated 
millions of tons of debris, some contaminated with unexploded ordnance, 
asbestos, and hazardous substances, as well as an increase in 
communicable diseases.
The World Health Organization reports 179,000 cases of acute respiratory 
infections and 136,000 cases of diarrhea in children under five after 
just three months of conflict. This is a clear sign of the impact of the 
destruction of public works.
In other countries, the abundance of natural resources fuels armed 
conflicts, a case in point being the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 
where the extraction of rare earth elements continues to fuel the 
conflict in the eastern part of the country.
Emissions from military activities represent a significant and often 
underestimated source of greenhouse gases; according to a study by 
Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Conflict and Environment 
Observatory (CEOBS), military facilities are responsible for 
approximately 5.5% of global emissions. They arise primarily from the 
massive consumption of fossil fuels by aircraft, ships, and armored 
vehicles, as well as from the production of weapons and energy for 
bases, often benefiting from exemptions in international climate 
reporting. Global military operational emissions are estimated to range 
from 300 to 600 million tons of CO2 equivalent (MtCO2e) per year. 
Considering the entire supply chain, the carbon footprint is between 
1,600 and 3,500 MtCO2e, or between 3.3% and 7.0% of global emissions, to 
which the CO2 from post-conflict reconstruction must be added.
Since the Kyoto Protocol, military activities have often been exempted 
or not properly reported in climate agreements, creating a data gap 
(military emissions gap): military data are secret, and states are not 
required to report their emissions. Greenhouse gas emissions caused by 
armed conflicts have always been classified military information, 
excluded from every global climate agreement, and any call for 
transparency has been rejected in the name of internal security. Rising 
global military spending, particularly within NATO, is expected to 
further exacerbate pollution, with estimates of over a trillion tons of 
CO2 produced over the next decade.
In war, having a more powerful weapons system than my adversary, 
regardless of its active ingredient and constituents, gives me such a 
tactical advantage that I don't think about the potential long-term 
environmental damage caused by the substances I use. And this is a 
common thread that remains as valid a hundred years ago as it is today.
The speaker is Matteo Guidotti, a chemist and senior researcher at the 
CNR's "Giulio Andreatta" Institute of Chemical Sciences and Technologies 
in Milan. He studies the environmental damage caused by conflicts like 
the one in Gaza, where a previous study highlighted how the war in the 
Strip had led to an estimated 281,000 tons of CO2 emissions, more than 
the amount of the same molecule released into the atmosphere in a year 
by twenty countries around the world.
The bombing of chemical industrial sites and oil depots, as is currently 
happening in Iran, serves to cripple a country's industrial and economic 
potential, preventing an easy recovery. However, what they cause in 
terms of the release of pollutants into the air, water, and soil is 
significant immediate and long-term damage to human health and the 
environment.
During the first Gulf War in 1991, more than six hundred oil wells 
burned uncontrollably, causing the daily release of 500,000 tons of 
pollutants, with global air quality repercussions.
Guidotti states: "In Ukraine, we're now talking about ecocide, the 
deliberate and voluntary destruction of an ecosystem; there are more 
than half a million tons of weapons waste abandoned on the territory." 
Or the episode of the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam,[2]which 
rendered approximately one million hectares of agricultural land 
unusable due to water contaminated by toxic substances from industries 
and urban and industrial wastewater that spilled over an entire region.
"Ukraine," Guidotti states, "is a highly industrialized country, and if 
industries, power plants, warehouses, and even buildings are hit, by 
mistake or intentionally, then enormous damage can be caused."
It should be emphasized that Ukraine has a high rate of soil 
contamination: much of its land is unused and will remain so for a long 
time, due to unexploded ordnance and the massive presence of toxic 
substances such as white phosphorus, used in the invasion of Ukraine. 
These bombs rain down white phosphorus, a highly destructive chemical 
that ignites upon contact with air and water, causing deep tissue 
necrosis in living beings. A deadly and devastating effect.[3]
The intense bombing has caused widespread fires, resulting in the loss 
of vast areas of forests: unique forests and habitats that Ukraine 
hosts, 6,808 protected natural areas, and approximately 35% of 
continental biodiversity. The conflict has had significant effects on 
biodiversity, with the disappearance of forest environments and several 
rare animal species: it is estimated that numerous bird species have 
been lost, and approximately 50,000 cetaceans have died from the bombing 
at sea. This, combined with the noise from ships, disorients these 
animals, condemning them to death in the short or long term.
Tehran, already shaken by the horrors of a regime that massacred 
thousands of young people who tried to resist, is now engulfed by black 
smoke from burning refineries and huge oil storage facilities.
Toxic fumes and highly corrosive acid rain are chemical pollutants 
caused by oil spills from affected facilities, which release mixtures of 
carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and formaldehyde into the air, as 
well as dioxins from the burning of plastic materials.
Ecocide
The crime of ecocide has been discussed since the 1960s, following the 
discoveries in the 1940s by American biologist Arthur W. Galston, who 
described the defoliant effect of a chemical used in Agent 
Orange,[4]later used in Vietnam by the US Army.
In 1972, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme raised the issue again during 
the United Nations conference, calling it an international crime 
precisely because of its use in Vietnam. The following year, Professor 
Richard Falk proposed an international convention on the crime of 
ecocide, defining the concept for the first time.
From that moment on, the definition of ecocide began to be codified as 
a crime in domestic law only in a few states, but "the main problem lies 
in the definition of the concept of ecocide;" as Elisabetta Reyneri, a 
lawyer specializing in environmental crimes, explains, "the issue today 
is that at the European level it is difficult to recognize ecocide as an 
autonomous crime, when it seems more appropriate to recognize a series 
of well-defined and clear crimes such as pollution, habitat destruction, 
the illegal release of waste, climate-altering emissions... treated as 
so-called qualified crimes."
To date, the European Commission has recently adopted Directive 
1203/2024 on the protection of the environment through criminal law, 
which has not yet been translated into national law. In practice, the 
directive explicitly refers to conduct capable of producing catastrophic 
effects. This is a somewhat more precise concept of ecocide that would 
allow for more severe penalties if crimes committed under this directive 
produced catastrophic or serious effects on the environment.
This directive, like international treaties, agreements, and 
conventions, does not prevent and has not prevented the hundreds of 
thousands of civilian deaths in all the conflicts that have occurred 
since the last century, nor have they prevented the resulting 
environmental devastation, as schematically described in this text.
The mutagenic and carcinogenic effects do not disappear with the end of 
the war; serious consequences for human health remain and persist over 
time. The climate and environmental damage of wars is defined as 
collateral and is still not given due consideration, yet the spreading 
of poisons into soil and aquifers and the emissions of poisonous gases 
into the air, in addition to killing people and animals, will also have 
an impact on future climate change, which is already causing death and 
destruction.
Notes
[1]World Bank, Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, European Union, United 
Nations, Second Ukraine Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA2): 
February 2022 - February 2023, World Bank Group, Washington, D.C. (US), 
2023 (http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099184503212328877).
[2]The dam and its hydroelectric power plant were severely damaged on 
the night of June 6, 2023, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
[3]A dramatic historical precedent: during the Vietnam War, a variant 
called napalm-B was developed, in which instead of gasoline, a mixture 
of polystyrene in a benzene-gasoline solution was added to which white 
phosphorus was added, which facilitated ignition when the gel was 
dispersed in the air, increasing its effects.
[4]Agent Orange was the code name given by the US Army to a defoliant 
that was widely sprayed throughout South Vietnam between 1961 and 1971 
during the Vietnam War. See Agent Orange, «Wikipedia» 
(https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agente_Arancio).

https://alternativalibertaria.fdca.it/wpAL/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en